The American Forces Radio and Television service touched a lot of people. Whether talent, support or listeners it touched a lot of us in ways that stateside media could only dream of. This website is unofficial and does not imply any endorsement from AFRTS, the Department of Defense or the United States government.
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Thom Whetston

From 1972-97 I was a radio announcer, mostly in the Northeast. I had the most fun with Armed Forces Radio first in Korea then in Panama. A lot of the time it was spontaneous or improvised and that made for a great learning laboratory. The network DJs, Charlie Tuna, Wolfman, Kris Erik Stevens, Jim Pewter, LaRita Shelby and the rest were so consistent, it was and amazing thing to hear. Then to Massachusetts and WEIM, WKNE, WKBK, WFGL, WMDK, WKBR, WCGY, WSRS, WGAW. Most of them don't exist as anything that resembles a radio station. I'm always ready to trade war stories... Thom Whetston afrts@live.com 612-356-AFRS (612)356-2377

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Gene Weed was with the network for a long time. He was a longtime talent with KFWB. In the early 60s KFWB was the big rock station in Los Angeles. By 1961 he was the assistant PD for Jim Hawthorne, who we've also heard here. He developed the Shivaree television which ended up running in 150 countries. Later working for Dick Clark productions. Gene came up with "Song Films" or as we call them now, music videos. A big career. Let's take a look at 1970 with Gene Weed.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Well, AFVN meant a lot to me because I spent almost two
years ---two tours---on the air in Saigon. We were the network and had seven AM
stations up country carrying our signal.They were required to produce three hours of their own programming each
day.

Music was the central part of what we presented and we
tried to emulate stateside radio in its various formats. But besides the music,
we copied the elements of programming we had either learned or heard on stateside
radio.

I did the allnight show , The Orient Express from 1 to 4
a.m. for much of the time I was there. I was on the board until 6 a.m. when Pat
Sajak (he spelled his name Sadjak then) would take over.To show you the variety, after my three hour
show ended, we had an R&B show by Herman Griffith at 4 a.m. and a country
show with Joe Allison at 5 a.m, both shows from AFRTS.

We had a ten minute newscast at 6 a.m., a five minute
sportscast then a feature that ran about three or four minutes….a chaplain
giving us a dose of religion.A
different chaplain would come in every week and record five programs. Then came
the famous "good morning Vietnam" show opening.

Later, after Pat left, I was moved to days and also did
the Dawnbuster which ran until nine (although at 8 a.m., the up-country
stations cut away to do one of their local hours).The war was winding down in 1970 and we had
fewer people to work with.After 9 a.m.,
there were two hour-long shows from AFRTS then from 11 a.m., we had another
local show.So by 1970 the guy who did
the morning show also had to do the 11 to noon show.There was a half hour newscast at noon and
from 12:30 to one, a lady from the USO came in.One of our jocks, Roger Ashworth married the USO lady at the time.

it was very hard to please everybody.In fact, we didn’t.We only had an AM and an FM in each
area.The FM in Saigon had a morning
show geared to older people then later in the day, they aired what we call
beautiful music.On the AM, we did what
stations did in the old days before a station specialized in just one kind of
music: "block programming".So
we'd have a two hour top 40 show from 7-9 p.m., a two hour country show in the
afternoon, a morning show that played the top 40 stuff, except the hard stuff, and even throw in a march.

We tried to cover all types of music including "underground,"
those guys were always ticked off at us. They didn't want to hear the hit from
the album, they wanted the other cuts. We had a Hispanic sergeant on the
weekend with a program of Spanish music called “Bolero." We also had a two hour oldies show on Saturday
night.

We had a good news department.There was a newscast at the top of every
hour around the clock.

They had to walk a tricky line because of what they could
report about the war.We also carried
Paul Harvey who didn't like the Vietnam war and kept throwing in phrases like
"that dead end war" that they edited out.

For sports, we also carried some big games live, like the
World Series which means that because of the time difference the game might
start at 3 in the morning and end about 7 or so.

Radio stations stateside have commercials. But we had PSA’s,
public service announcements which stateside broadcasters use for charities and
other good causes. They were our commercials. We tried to make them as
interesting as possible, often with nothing more than some talented people, an
idea, some copy, musicandsounds effects.

We made every reference possible to home, stateside, the
world.Getting out of the Vietnam, if
even for a week on R&R, was a very big deal and we made it sound as
glamorous as possible. We hadannouncements about taking the weekly malaria pill (guaranteed to give
you the runs although we never brought that up).

We ran things about the dangers of getting VD, warning to
buy savings bonds and announcements about re-upping and doing another tour. Once, we ran an announcement saying the mayor
of Saigon wanted us to ask our maids in our hotel not to hang out uniforms so
they could be seen from the street.It
ended with something like "for a better looking Saigon."

I'm very proud of my association with AFVN. In more than
45 years of doing radio, in some pretty big cities like Chicago, D.C.,
Dallas/Ft. Worth and Phoenix, I think
the audience at AFVNmay have been the
most responsive.But they usually didn't
have a lot of choices.They needed us
more.

Friday, April 12, 2013

We lost Tony Sheridan recently. Tony was a big star in Europe. In the states most famous for having the pre-fame Beatles as a backup band on a recording session. Great talent, just never really broke out in the States.

In 1981 Pete Pittman had Tony on AFN. Pete said that it wasn't so much an "interview" as a conversation. Drinking Cola, and chatting "He was pretty disarming that way.

Redd Harper (1903-1992) was raised in Oklahoma, gigged around the midwest with a Western Jazz band. He moved to Los Angeles. World War II started and he did his time in the Coast Guard. After the war Redd had a very popular show on AFRS. The Hollywood Roundup focused on the music and the movies. Here's a 1948 visit with Gloria Henry.

Redd had his own Hollywood credits appearing the 1948 The Strawberry Roan and 1947s Under Colorado Skies (uncredited role as stagecoach driver). His final bigscreen appearance was in Oiltown USA in 1955.

With American Country Countdown Bob Kinglsy was the Dean of Country music. Before that came together he was one of us, first with the Air Force in Iceland (love to hear an aircheck of that) and later at McCadden Place rocking up a storm.